1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix your brown sugar, peanut butter, margarine, and shortening in a large mixing bowl either by hand or with an electric mixer, until smooth.
2. Add in the applesauce, and mix again. Next, put in flour, vanilla, baking soda and salt. Mix until well blended.
3. Take a rounded teaspoon and spoon onto a cookie sheet (I put wax paper over what I am cooking on) and use a fork, pressing once on each side of the cookie to get the nice fork lines in it.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on your oven. Be careful not to overbake. It is important to let them cool for several minutes before attempting to take off of the sheet, it gives them time to harden.
Enjoy!
Source of recipe: I have tried many vegan peanut butter cookies and have not been satisfied. I finally made my own recipe after having a huge craving for them, and came out with this one, which tastes wonderful. I hope you all like it as much as I did!

Oh my, these were SO amazing. I made a few changes-- I had no vanilla extract, but I had some Vanilla Rice Dream on hand, I only had sea salt, earth balance (no crisco!), and crunchy Skippy. They were SERIOUSLY amazing. The only other thing I want to remark on these is that I was a little concerned when the dough was very crumbly at the end of mixing.No problem, though, I rolled the dough into balls with my hands and they are GREAT.

I just made these with my 2 year old daughter. She loved the dough and I think I probably only ended up with half a batch!I wasn't keen on the cookies as they were just SOOOOOOOOO sweet, one cookie actually made me feel a little sick! I left out 1/4 cup of sugar as couldn't bring myself to add more and they were still very sweet. Also the peanut butter I used doesn't have any added sugar.They are lovely and soft and a little crunchy on the outside but I would say unless you have a major sweet tooth then maybe they're not the cookie for you.

These were awesome!!! I've made two batches over the holidays and they fly off the plate. I had to substitute gluten-free flour (Bob's Red Mill) + 1/4 tsp xanthan gum and they turned out terrific. I also used all margarine (Earth Balance) instead of the marg/shortening mix, half the vanilla, and added vegan/GF chocolate chips to half of them for my husband. AMAZING! I took a plate of these and a creamy vegan/GF pasta casserole to our family xmas get-together and my mother-in-law, who is also wheat gluten intolerant, wants my recipes. Woo hoo! ;)b